Small Universe
by HardlyFatal
Summary: Crossover of AtS with Stargate: Atlantis. The story of how McKay's life changes when he meets a girl who wants a taco. COMPLETE
1. Chapter 1

**Small Universe**

"I don't see why you dislike this place so much," Rodney said to her, biting deeply into an apple-like thing. Juice spilled down his chin, and he swiped absentmindedly at it. "It's pretty, and peaceful, and… and there's all the fruit you can choke down." He gestured with his own for emphasis.

"Fruit," Fred repeated, her tone utterly disgusted. "I didn't like fruit to begin with, and now that it's all there is to eat, let me tell you, I really _really_ don't like it." She sighed, staring down at where her toe was scuffing the paving stones under their feet. "What I wouldn't give for a taco right about now."

Rodney almost choked on the apple-thing. "Taco?" he said, voice garbled around his mouthful.

"Yeah, taco," she said glumly. "It's this—"

"I know what a taco is," he interrupted, chucking the fruit over his shoulder as he turned to face her. "What I want to know is how _you_ know what a taco is."

Fred looked bewildered. "It's a common food where I come from, is all," she said slowly.

"Where I come from, too," he said meaningfully, staring hard at her.

Comprehension dawned on her face, and her eyes rounded almost comically. "You mean you—you're from—wait. Let's make sure we're talking about the same thing before I get too excited. I don't think I could take any more disappointment this week, after the way the plumbing's been shot to hell."

Rodney took a deep breath. "Okay," he began. "A taco is this corn tortilla, shaped like a U, crispy, and there's—"

"—meat and lettuce and cheese and if you go to the taco stand on the corner of Mercer and Burlington on the north side of L.A. they have this evil taco sauce you stick on it that makes you burp flames for the rest of the day," Fred finished, her words coming faster and faster until they were nearly blurring together.

They stared dumbly at each other for a long, tense moment.

"I'm from Canada," Rodney said after a while. "Ottawa."

"I'm from Texas," Fred said. "San Antonio. But I've lived in Los Angeles for the past few years. Before that I was sucked into another dimension, in a situation only slightly similar to this one. By that I mean I was a slave, just like I am this time, but here they give me clothes and let me do things besides shovel dung. I didn't like shoveling dung. But by the time Angel found me, I was pretty good at it. Then—"

"Wait. Wait." Rodney pinched the bridge of his nose and squinched his eyes shut. "You were in another _dimension_?"

"Well, yeah," she replied easily, like these things happened every day. He was starting to think that perhaps, for her, they did. "Aren't we in another dimension now?"

He dropped his hand to his side and shook his head. "No, we're in another galaxy. The Pegasus galaxy, to be precise."

She punched him in the bicep, hard enough to smart, and exclaimed, "No _way_!"

Rodney rubbed his sore arm and glared at her. "Way."

"But how?" She began rubbing her chin in what he was beginning to learn was the precursor to her brain starting to puzzle things out. "I got here by magical portal. How about you?"

"_Magical_ portal? No. By perfectly explainable and empirically scientific portal." He was starting to think perhaps her brain was more scrambled than he'd initially thought.

"Hm." She moved from chin-rubbing to pacing, wagging a finger at the ground as to punctuate her words. "I've been studying theoretical wormhole physics ever since the first time I got sucked into a different dimension, and everything had pointed to it being possible." She looked up at him, eyes shining. "Small world, huh?"

He just shook his head. "Small universe," he corrected, but his tone was almost gentle. "Tiny. Miniscule, even." He squinted a little, his prodigious mind already at work. "How did it happen? Your getting here, that is."

Fred grimaced. "As far as I know, some glowy entity nabbed me just as my soul was being siphoned out of my body by an ancient goddess. I was given the choice to become a glowy entity as well, but I didn't think it sounded like much fun. Plus, I'm not big on diner food."

McKay wondered what her prejudice against diner food had to do with anything, then dismissed it as irrelevant as the mention itself. "Ok," he said instead. "What then?"

"Then, I woke up here. Naked. And cold." She shivered at the memory. McKay shivered a little too, but for a different reason. "They took me in and put me in the general slave pool—"

"Slave pool? Like a typing pool?" McKay thought that idea was pretty funny.

She smiled too. "They soon realized I was smarter than your average bear, so I got promoted from 'future concubine' to 'fix-it person'. But I don't know how much longer it'll be before I'm demoted back to 'potential ho'." She averted her gaze, looking upset. "All things considered, I think I preferred being a cow."

Bear… cow.. McKay was mostly just confused. "Wait," he demanded. "Back up. They're going to make you sleep with Innak if you can't figure out how to fix the plumbing?"

"Yeah. Stinky, huh?" Fred squared her narrow shoulders, clearly trying to put on a brave face but only ending up looking more pathetic. "Can't say I'm looking forward to it. But the last time I tried to escape, they locked me in a room for a week. Hey, what are you doing?"

McKay had begun to gather up the remains of the lunch, bundling it into a wad that he pressed—far harder than was necessary—until it was compacted into a hard little ball. "Let's go," he said. "Back to the lab."

"What, now?" She blinked huge eyes at him, surprised at his sudden motivation to get back to a problem he'd as much as said was beneath him.

"Sooner we get back to it, the sooner it's solved." Taking her elbow, he began to steer her back to the cellar.

"Thanks," she stammered, hurrying to match his pace, shooting furtively admiring glances his way. "I don't know why your teammates think you're a jerk."

"I do," he replied pleasantly. "And in a rare occurrence, they're correct. I _am_ a jerk. I've found that a good personality is only necessary when you've got nothing else going for you. But for those of us with rather more exceptional resources, it's more of an option than a requirement."

"And you say it with a straight face," Fred marveled. "I'm impressed."

They'd arrived at the door to the lab. McKay nodded in satisfaction. "As you were intended to be," he said, and motioned for her to precede him into the room.

Fred smiled at him then, a real smile, and it lit up her face. "You know, I think this might work," she said, voice nearly a whisper, but filled with a tenuous hope.

McKay shooed the lone scientist in the room toward the door, snatching the tools from the hapless man and smirked at her. "Of course it will. It always does."


	2. Chapter 2

**Unravel the Knot**

_Four days earlier_

They had gated to Azimia in hopes of trading technology for food. It appeared prosperous enough and the ruler of the land, Innak, was eager (even greedy) to trade. However, his personality was, as Sheppard pointed out _sotto voce_, the pits.

Within the first fifteen minutes of meeting them, he'd propositioned both Teyla and Ford, pointing out with a lewd wink that he preferred "dark meat" and wasn't particular about which gender it came in. Ford had wanted to shoot him, and though Sheppard had been inclined to agree, Teyla had settled them down (and indicated they'd get Innak later, when he wasn't suspecting) in her usual placid way and begun trade negotiations.

It wasn't easy. Innak was even more condescending than McKay, and the team hadn't been able to smoothly cover their shock at his casual mistreatment of his many slaves. It was almost enough to make them turn their sights to other planets for the supplies they needed.

But they did need those supplies quite desperately; while their staples were still at adequate levels, the fresh foods they needed to stay healthy were at critical levels, and Azimia was a lush tropical planet where fruit hung heavy on every bough. If only they could cement the trade agreement between their two peoples, it would be a matter of hours before Atlantis was eating well and the preliminary medical problems that had sprung up from lack of proper nutrition could be fought back.

Innak could tell they disapproved of his ownership of fellow human beings. He was a crafty man, however, and knew that he had something they needed. As long as their food situation was pressing, he could afford to be a little difficult.

And they had something he needed, as well: McKay. It appeared that the city's sewers were in danger of overflowing if an improved aqueduct system was not formulated soon, and thanks to McKay's usual posturing, Innak was now convinced that the Canadian was an angel sent from above to help him in his hour of need.

Thus, Innak's ultimatum: fix the sewers, get the trade agreement, and eat like lords.

That, of course, had been enough to make McKay agree to Innak's ultimatum. He had scampered off to whichever wing of the palace housed the doomed sewer research, leaving the other three to explore Azimia and enjoy the city's hospitality.

Sheppard and Ford were, to be frank, utterly bored with the place after the second day, and even Teyla's patience was showing signs of wearing thin by the end of the third. Only McKay's spirits showed no signs of flagging. No one could figure out why, and it was driving them all crazy.

Usually, he was the first to want to abandon a world once the depths of its technological mysteries had been plumbed. Azimia was at the equivalent of Earth in North America and Europe in the middle of the 19th century—post-Industrial, but pre-combustion, certainly.

By McKay's standards, then, it was positively archaic. And in any other circumstance they'd thus experienced, he'd have been griping about it at the top of his lungs.

_So what,_ Sheppard mused silently, _was different about this place?_ Was it because McKay's intellectual curiosity refused to let a simple problem get the better of him? If it were anyone else, he'd have thought maybe McKay was just trying to be positive and make the most out of the situation.

But it _was_ McKay, and so that possibility was ruled out. McKay _never_ tried to make the best of a situation. McKay pissed and moaned until everyone else was as miserable as he was.

Intrigued by this minor conundrum, and really really bored, Sheppard decided to investigate. Leaving Teyla and Ford to continue mingling with the natives, he wandered off through the palace until he heard the familiar sound of McKay's voice.

"No, not there, _here_!" the Canadian was exclaiming, and Sheppard could just imagine the downward slant of brows as McKay scowled at whichever poor bastard had not psychically read his mind and anticipated his needs before he'd known he had them.

Then the strident tone changed, and became—Sheppard found himself gaping in shock at the sound of it—gentle. "How did that work, Fred?" McKay asked as Sheppard tiptoed closer to the door. "Better than last time?"

Why the hell would he become nice to a fellow scientist? Hell, he was still rude and hostile to Zelenka back in Atlantis, and he'd known and worked with the guy for months now. It was unthinkable he'd be solicitous and pleasant to a new person. Especially one named Fred.

The little line of confusion that had settled between Sheppard's eyes thus smoothed away with almost startling speed, then, when he entered the laboratory and found McKay standing at a hip-high table and flanked on either side by two Azimians. One was a man at whom McKay kept shooting filthy looks whenever he did anything that could be described as "interacting" with the wire-sprouting gizmo before them.

The other was a skinny, scared-looking young woman, who reached out and slipped a small metal part into a slot on the side and then wound a wire into place around a node as McKay watched with soft eyes and patient expression that quickly changed to one of extreme ire and promised retribution when the male scientist opened his mouth to say something.

The sight made Sheppard smirk and relax his grip on his weapon, cradling it informally in his arms as he leant against the door jamb.

McKay had a crush.

_Oh, this was beautiful_.

He would get years of teasing out of this, he just knew it.

"Yes, Major, what is it?" McKay asked him briskly, and Sheppard forced his smile to fade. McKay always stayed right at the line between briskness and rudeness with Sheppard. He was more than equipped to beat someone intellectually, and he relied on most people to value at least the pretense of being too civilized to confront him physically.

But there was always that little niggling doubt, which Sheppard carefully cultivated, that one day Sheppard might actually just haul off and punch him in the nose if pissed off too mightily.

"Oh, nothing," Sheppard replied lazily, sauntering into the room and glancing around. "Just thought I'd come see what you were doing."

McKay was ignoring him, concentrating on the gizmo again, before he'd finished the sentence. Sheppard decided to test his theory and mentally ratcheted up his charisma.

"Hi, there," he said to the woman, a charming smile on his lips. "Did I hear right, is your name really Fred?"

She glanced up at him with big brown eyes, and suddenly Sheppard didn't think McKay was so stupid for being interested in her.

"I'm pretty sure it is," she said without a hint of sarcasm. "But I'm not really sure about anything, anymore."

Fred returned to working on the gizmo, and Sheppard looked at McKay with his eyebrows raised in inquiry.

McKay ignored him, instead once again deciding on insults as the best way to progress. "Your presence is distracting and, I might add, not a little annoying. Doesn't Teyla have anything for you to do?"

Sheppard, a little offended at the suggestion that it was Teyla and not him in charge, briefly reconsidered punching McKay in the nose. "She let me have time off for good behaviour," he drawled, a note of irritation rising to his voice.

McKay glowered, jerked his head toward the male scientist, and nodded toward the door, all at the same time. "You can take Kalen, here, with you. He's not helping at _all_."

And with that, McKay bent back over the gadget, speaking with Fred, and Sheppard knew he'd been dismissed. He forced his fingers to relax on the trigger of his P90 and preceded the scientist from the room.

"Is he always like that?" the unfortunate Kalen asked, darting a scared look back at the laboratory as they progressed down the corridor.

"Yeah," Sheppard replied, "and sometimes worse." He was glad the other man was with him; the hallways were so twisty it was a miracle he'd found the lab to begin with.

"How do you keep from killing him?" Kalen demanded bluntly as they emerged from a stairwell to a sunny, flower-decked cloister.

"It gets harder every day." Sheppard said, and sighed.


	3. Chapter 3

**And Tie Another**

_Two days later_

They came back through the gate at a decent speed, all of them facing backwards. Their weapons were not drawn, but Major Sheppard's team appeared tense, and Lieutenant Ford's hand kept twitching in the direction of his P90.

Elizabeth Weir mentally counted heads, as she always did when one of her teams was out on a mission. _One, two, three, four… five? _Frowning, she counted again just to be sure. Yes, there was a fifth person, a woman. She was thin as a rail, with long hair and enormous eyes.

Weir moved closer to the low wall of the command center overlooking the gate chamber below. "I wasn't expecting any guests," she called down to them, her tone mild but inquiring.

"Neither were we," Sheppard replied, sounding more than a little sour. He sliced a look of pure disgruntlement at McKay, who returned it with interest.

"Who is this?" Weir asked. The girl seemed ill-at-ease and was sticking close to McKay, to what was clearly his discomfort.

"Fred," the girl replied, climbing the stairs. "I'm Fred Burkle."

Weir held out her hand for shaking. "Elizabeth Weir," she said, smiling politely. "To what do we owe your visit?"

But Fred missed the smile; she was studying her surroundings with eyes that were somehow both dreamy and sharp at the same time. "Oh, it's not a visit," she replied absently. "I live here now, I guess."

Weir's eyebrows shot toward her hairline. "You do?" she asked, turning on her heel to pin Sheppard and McKay with a gimlet gaze. Somehow, she just knew those two had something to do with it. "And why is that?"

McKay was pointing to the conference room. "Can we--? So no one can--?" he urged, making crablike sideways progress toward it. There was a flush across his cheeks that spoke of embarrassment, and his eyes were pleading.

"She lives here now because she's his _wife_," Sheppard replied, his voice both loud and clear.

Immediately, the low buzz of ambient conversation around them ceased. Weir gaped at the major for the space of a heartbeat. "She's whose wife? _Rodney's_?"

The man in question groaned and covered his face with his hands. "You bastard," he moaned.

Weir spun around to face him. "You were gone less than a week," she stated flatly, steering him toward the conference room with the rest of his team following, Fred trailing behind distractedly. "How did you manage to get married in six days?"

"I didn't mean to, alright?" McKay snapped, yanking his elbow out of her grip. He found his customary chair and took a seat with what would have been termed a flounce, had he given it just a little more of a flourish. "I was just trying to—"

"Trying to be a knight in shining armour, rescuing the damsel in distress from being locked in a tower," Sheppard interrupted, grinning almost ferally at McKay, who promptly threw him a positively filthy look as the conference room doors swiveled shut.

"With all due respect, Major, I believe that Fred's situation was somewhat more unpleasant than merely being locked in a tower." Teyla's measured tone was a welcome island of serenity in the jangling atmosphere of the room.

"Of course it was," McKay interjected. "You know damned well I don't just go marrying people for the hell of it. If she was just going to be locked away somewhere, I wouldn't have said a word."

Weir began to massage her temples, feeling the nucleus of a headache form behind them. "Okay, from the beginning. You went to Azimia in search of a ZPM, didn't find one but the people were willing to trade medicine for food. You were there to negotiate, their leader stated that they required help fixing something—"

"There was a problem with their aqueduct system," Ford volunteered. "The poop wasn't going away, it was coming back."

"Thank you, Lieutenant," Weir said with a slight wince, turning back to Sheppard. "So, their leader Innak said that unless you didn't fix the plumbing, there would be no treaty."

"So I set my considerable intellect to solving such a menial issue, yes." McKay picked up the narrative when Weir left off. "One of the people I was assigned to work with was Fred, here. We got to talking, and…"

He looked at Fred, then shocked them all when the tone of his voice, usually strident, gentled. "Do you want to explain, or should I?"

She gave him a little smile and patted his hand, laying flat on the table before them. "I'll do it, thanks." Then she turned to the others. "See, I'm from Texas. When I told Rodney, he just about died, let me tell you. I didn't even mean to mention it, because people tend to think you're nuts when you say you're from another dimension—I thought this was another dimension, see—but I really wanted a taco and it just sort of slipped out, and—"

"Fred's from Earth," McKay interrupted, but pleasantly, and with a faint smile of his own in her direction. "She says she died in Los Angeles, and woke up on Azimia. She was one of Innak's slaves—"

"At least I wasn't a cow this time—" came the extraordinary comment. She was perfunctorily shushed by McKay, who now patted _her_ hand.

"And she was slated to become his next concubine, since she hadn't been able to make any headway with the aqueducts," McKay continued, directing his words to Sheppard. "Since she's not only a bright person who's worth far more than being just a common whore, but from our own planet, I thought we should make at least a token effort to extract her from that situation."

With a final glare aimed the major's way, McKay sat back in his chair and folded his arms over his chest, looking quite satisfied with himself.

Slowly, Weir turned to face Sheppard. He ran a hand over his stubbled jaw and sighed tiredly. "You could have tried to go about it a better way, is all I'm saying," he said at last. "We could have tried to buy her, or to get her thrown in with the food we were trading for."

He stood up and began pacing, not noticing the effect his words had on the others. "Instead, you march up to the throne room and say that you've rigged the plumbing to explode and won't defuse it unless Innak gives Fred to you!"

McKay sniffed, staring at a point over Teyla's shoulder. "If we'd given him the chance, he'd have robbed us blind. He would have demanded far more than we can afford to trade away. We don't exactly have an unlimited store of things we can use to barter, you know!"

"But thanks to you, those people now think we're terrorists! Slave-stealing terrorists!" Sheppard replied, face flushing red with anger.

"Oh, and that's worse than what they actually _are_, which is slave-owning criminals?" McKay ranted back, standing as well and leaning on his hands over the table toward Sheppard. "They had her slated for his bed _tonight_, Major. I had to do something before that happened. Unless you're okay with the idea of her being raped for however many days it took us to finalize the negotiations?"

Teyla held up her hands for silence, and for a moment the only sound in the room was the sound of the two men breathing heavily.

"You both have valid points," she said calmly. "Major Sheppard is correct that at least a token attempt at a more peaceable solution should have been tried, but Dr. McKay is also right. We could not have allowed her to be taken by force while we worked to conclude the trade treaty."

"Um." Fred's voice was wobbly, and she seemed to shrink in upon herself as the other five all turned to look at her. "For what it's worth? I'm really glad Rodney did what he did. Otherwise, I'd be with Innak right now, and that's not really something I was looking forward too. I like my men forceful but not that forceful, if you get my meaning."

Weir judiciously ignored Sheppard's under-breath mutter, which sounded like "Too bad you're stuck with _him_, then."

"So, you blackmailed Innak into giving Fred to you," Weir said, addressing McKay. "How did you end up married?"

"Innak insisted the only way he'd let Fred go, even under threat of blowing poop all over the city, was if we were married," McKay replied grudgingly.

"Innak's a real bastard, pardon my French," Ford said cheerfully. "I think he was only doing it to piss everyone off."

"He succeeded," Sheppard grumbled. "There's nothing about this situation I like."

"Bottom-line it for me, gentlemen," Weir commanded, feeling her patience begin to slip. "What's our status with this planet?"

"McKay miscalculated how long it would take before the toilets began to blow," Sheppard said flatly.

"Miscalculated?" McKay snorted. "As _if_. No, it went off precisely as I planned—just as we were about to leave."

Sheppard heaved another sigh. "Innak had just finished the wedding ceremony when the first explosion occurred, and they were definitely getting threatening when we were able to get to the gate and dial out."

"It is doubtful, Dr. Weir, that the people of Azimia are amenable to trade with us any longer," Teyla said carefully. "And I would not suggest we return anytime soon."

Weir sighed. She'd been hoping for some sort of positive alliance; with a group their size, having enough food was always a concern. And now, they had an extra mouth to feed. Couldn't be helped, though, and she was glad to tighten her belt a little more if it meant keeping a woman out of forced prostitution.

"Okay," she said finally, and glanced at Fred. "I assume that you won't actually be honoring these marriage vows, and will live separately?"

Fred looked surprised at the question; McKay actually flinched. "Yes," he said firmly, fishing a necklace of polished wooden beads from under his shirt and pulling it over his head, leaving his hair rumpled.

"Yes," Fred agreed, and removed her own necklace. Elizabeth took this to mean that the necklaces were the Azimian equivalent to Earth's wedding rings. "No offense or anything, Rodney, you've been really nice and you risked your life to save me and you're even kind of cute in a pudgy Canadian way but I don't think I'm ready to be married to you."

"Thanks… I suppose," he answered, standing, then continuing briskly. "Elizabeth, Fred's a trained physicist. I'd like her on my team here at Atlantis."

Elizabeth looked taken aback at the sudden change of subject. "If you're confident her abilities are up to par with the performance you'll need out of her…" Honestly, Fred looked like a strong breeze might knock her over. Elizabeth couldn't imagine her putting in the long, arduous hours McKay and Zelenka and the rest often put in during crunch time, which seemed to be at least once a week. Usually on Friday evenings, now that she thought of it.

"What do you think, Fred?" Again, that weird softening of McKay's voice when he spoke to her. It was beyond unnerving, to the point of being downright spooky.

"I think that should be alright," she replied, her Texan drawl a comfortable bit of home to Elizabeth's ears.

"Excellent. Then it's settled." McKay seemed to have conveniently forgotten that his superior hadn't actually agreed yet, and ushered Fred from the conference room toward his laboratory.

Elizabeth sighed, not quite annoyed but not exactly happy, either.

"Think of it this way," Sheppard offered, sauntering around the table to stand by her side and watch McKay and Fred depart. "Maybe she'll be able to keep him quiet. Calm him down a little, so he's not having a hissy fit every ten minutes."

"She does seem to have a soothing effect on him," Elizabeth admitted.

"The value of that cannot be underestimated," added Teyla, and slipped past them and out the door.

No one could argue that.


End file.
